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Jarring Labor Day sale ad eclipses Baltimore Sun website

The week before Labor Day is certainly a time when readers can expect to see some visually appalling ads in their local newspapers, but what about newspaper websites?

Commentators including Jim Romenesko noticed an advertisement on The Baltimore Sun’s website Monday that certainly could compete with the most eye-straining of print ads. The ad for local store Jarvis Appliance’s Labor Day sale looks like it came straight out of the late 1990s heyday of Internet pop-up ads and took up a huge chunk of the paper’s home page.

The paper’s throwback ad strategy has at least one supporter in Advertising Age’s Tim Peterson. The ad shows that the Sun is getting online support from local advertisers, which can be difficult, he pointed out.

“Maybe ugly can sometimes perform,” he wrote. “Readers don't need to click through, or to wait out an elaborate video, to know exactly what's on offer this weekend, or even what the store hours are.”

The eye-popping look certainly grabbed a lot of attention.

That said, the Sun doesn’t seem to be going that route with the ad atop its site today. A much more modern-looking, animated ad for the Maryland Renaissance Festival holds the spot.